Ephraim Kishon died

......At home we took down two of our largest suitcases and brought Amir in to watch.

"Amir," we told him all open and honest, "Mummy and Daddy . .
"Not go-way!" Amir broke out, "Not go-way! Amir loves Mummy-Daddy! Amir not allolone! Not go-way! ..



He was positively shaking, his eyes all wet, his little nose all crimson, his arms flailing in helpless panic. Oh, God, how could we do this to him? We took him in our arms and hugged him dose. "We?'re not going!" we swore, "Who said we were going? We just fetched these suitcases down to see if there were any toys for Amir in them! Mummy and Daddy are staying home, you hear! For ever! Only here! Always here! Only Amir! Never anything but Amir! Abroad naughty!"

But this time the shock has evidently been too much for him. Our boy is sobbing as if his little heart would break. He is holding on to my trouser legs like he?'ll never let go again. oh, my poor baby, what have we done to you?

"Don?'t just stand there," the little woman cries in consternation, "Get him some bubblegum!"

Amir?'s weeping stops with a squeal of brakes.

"Bubblegum?" he says, "Daddy bring Amir bubblegum from the broad?"

"Yes," I say quickly, "With stripes!"

The child gets up, the child isn?'t crying, the child is happy. "Bubblegum-with-stripes! Bubblegum-with-stripes!" he sings, dancing about the room and clapping his hands, "Go-way, Daddy, go-way, Mummy, go broad! Bring Amir heaps of bubblegum!"

His eyes shine, his cheeks glow, the child is overjoyed.

"Go-way!" he shouts, "Go-way now! Go broad! Why Mummy-Daddy not go? Go-ho-ho! ..

There, now he?'s crying again. His big blue eyes are wet with tears, his whole little body is trembling. He drags the suitcases over and dumps them under our noses.

"We?'ll go in a little while," we promise, "In a little while Soon."

"No! Now!"

So that?'s why we left for Europe a week earlier than planned. The last few days were particularly hard because the child kept urging us to be gone, to be gone already. Every morning he?'d wake up and be disappointed all over again to find us still there. He?'s very attached to us, is the child. We intend to bring him lots of bubblegum with stripes. We?'ll bring the psychiatrist some too.

They speak three languages in Switzerland: the Germans know French and Italian, the French know French and the Italians know how to work the land. Those of French origin look down upon the Germans, the Germans look down upon the French, both look down upon the Italians, and all three look down upon foreigners

Happy Birthday to the State of Israel (In: »Sorry we won«)

Israel is a country so tiny that there is no room to write its
name on the world map.

It is the only country in the world which is financed by its
taxpayers abroad.

It is a country which all the time eats up its inhabitants, and yet does not grow fat.

It is a country of boundless boundaries.

It is a country where mothers learn the mother tongue from
their sons.

It is a country where the fathers ate sour grapes, and the
children's teeth are excellent.

It is a country where one writes Hebrew, reads English, and
speaks Yiddish.

It is a county where everybody has the right to speak his mind,
but there is no law forcing anybody to listen.
Return to Flashback:
The State of Israel
It is the most enlightened country in the region, thanks to the
Arabs.

It is a country where all the capital is concentrated in Jewish
hands--and there is much grumbling because of this.

It is a country where one can buy anything in the world for his
money--except an apartment, which is very expensive.

It is a country where any babe in arms may contradict his
papa's political views.

It is a country of elections, but no choice.

It is a country which is an organic part of its trade unions.

It is a country where nobody wants to work, so they build a
new town in three days' time and go idle the rest of the week.

It is a country where a slip of paper can move mountains, but
all the mountains beget is speeches.

It is a country which produces less than it eats, and yet, of all
places, it is here that nobody has ever died of hunger.

It is a country where nobody expects miracles, but everybody
takes them for granted.

It is a country where one calls ministers simply "Moishe"--and
then almost dies with the excitement of it.

It is the only country in the region whose political regime is the
bus cooperative.

It is a country whose survival is permanently endangered, and
yet its inhabitants' ulcers are caused by the neighbors from
above.

It is a country where every human being is a soldier, and every soldier is a human being.

It is the only country in which I could live. It is my country.

Land without Fleas

Before going out on our first walk in Zurich, we had a quiet talk with the hotel porter: ˝They say the Swiss don?'t even lock their bicycles,˝ I gushed to the porter, ˝but just leave them out in the Street. Is it true?˝

˝Of course.˝

˝And,˝ the wife asked, ˝aren?'t they ever stolen?˝

˝Of course they are. And how! But anyone who doesn?'t lock his bicycle deserves to have it stolen. Now, when the city is full of foreigners....?'

Every fifth person in Switzerland is a foreigner. I was No. 1,100,005 my wife was No. 1,100,010.

All the Same, there are Swiss emigrants. Even Israel gets a few genuine born-Swiss citizens. Why? I don?'t want to be obvious, hut I think it?'s because of the cleanliness. One day, for instance, we went to the famous Zurich Zoo and stopped in front of the monkey cage.

As is known, the favorite pastime of mamma chimpanzees is to hunt for fleas in the fur of their offspring. Well, this mamma chimpanzee had been looking for over half an hour for any sort of insect on the head of her little son: she scratched, combed, rummaged about in his hair, then gave up, an expression of total dejection on her face, and sat down to brood.

˝We don?'t even know what to do,˝ the keeper complained. ˝We even imported fleas, hut they fled in the face of Swiss hygiene. How is it going to end?˝

I had no advice for him. I told the keeper that soon I would be back in Israel, and lectured him about our rich, flourishing insect life. When we parted, he had tears in his eyes.

We first clashed with the supernatural cleanliness of the country on the farnous Bahnhofstrasse. We had gone into one of the department stores lining the street, taken the escalator to the fourth floor, and bought two precisely crafted cream puffs packed on trim little paper plates. On the way down we opened the package, and walking to our hotel, swallowed the cakes greedily. They were great. We had never eaten such marvelous pastry before, except in Italy a day and a half ago. But hardly had we swallowed the last bit when we heard a big helloing and someone carne running after us: ˝tschuldigung,˝ a well dressed gentleman panted, ˝you lost your plates.˝

With that he held out the chocolate-stained paper plates together with the wrapping paper, which we had thoughtlessly tossed away at the climax of our enjoyment.

˝tschuldigung,˝ I replied to our benefactor, ˝we haven?'t ?'lost?' this. . .

˝Then what?˝

˝What do you mean, then what?˝

˝Then how come I found it on the pavement?˝

˝Tanke schön,˝ the wife said quickly, took the sticky papers from the gentleman?'s hand and dragged me away.

˝Have you gone out of your mind?˝ the little woman hissed. ˝Look around!˝

I looked around and reeled with the shock of it. Only then did I realize that we were in clean Switzerland?'s cleanest city and in that city?'s most antiseptic quarter. On the sidewalks there was not a trace of litter; at worst there were a few pale stains which had not yet come out in the scrubbing. In the distance an impeccably dressed sweeper kept chasing a few lazily rolling dust specks. And I had dared to pollute this immaculately clean pavement with my dirty paper! It was sacrilege!

I carefully folded the paper plates in such a way that the sticky parts faced inward, then looked around, greatly perplexed.

˝All right,˝ I said, ˝still I can?'t carry this on me wherever I go. After all, we?'ll be in Switzerland for two weeks. . ."

˝Keep your shirt on,˝ the little one calmed me. ˝Somewhere we?'ll find a place where there is litter, so that we can dispose of the plates legally.˝

She made this statement at 11 A.M., and by 2 P.M. I was still in possession of the gooey things. If we had found but one tiny slip of paper, we would have unhesitatingly mated our bundle to it, hut we did not find even a piece of confetti. In the end we boarded a streetcar, sat down in a corner next to the open window, and at a curve, deep in conversation, instinctively, with a careless flick of our wrist. . .

Screech!!!

The driver slammed on the brakes.

˝Tanke sehr!˝ I nimbly jumped off the streetcar and picked up our lost valuables.

˝Very kind of you,˝ I thanked the conductor as we moved off again. ˝Luckily nothing has happened to them. . ."

By then we were ready to press the panic button. With the courage of the desperate I accosted an elderly Swiss gentleman sitting next to me, and asked him what would he do if he were stuck with, let?'s say, a piece of dirty paper and would like to get rid of it. The old gentleman thought it over for a moment, then said this sounded so hypothetical that he could scarcely visualize such a situation hut, theoretically, he supposed he would take the paper waste in question home and on Sunday afternoon burn it. I disclosed to him that the package in my possession qualified as waste, whereupon the Swiss gentleman immediately gave us his address, inviting us to bring it there next day at 3:4S, and once there, we could Stay as his guests to the end of the year ?- his wife would be delighted.

My wife visibly felt inclined to accept the invitation, but I had my doubts about its sincerity, so while expressing our deep-felt gratitude, I told him I would take advantage of his kind offer only in an emergency as I had thought of a simpler method for getting rid of the nuisance: I would put it in an envelope and mail it to Israel.

˝All right,˝ said the old gentleman, ˝hut what are they going to do with it there?˝

˝They?'ll throw it into the Jordan,˝ the wife said, whereupon the 0 gentleman nodded understandingly, and after a sentimental farewell we got off in the suburbs. My idea was to wait for the fall of darkness and then bury the bundle under a tree. However, we found all trees girdled with iron fencing, to prevent the burying of refuse. . .

We strolled back toward the centre of the city and there, to our delight, hanging on a lamp post, discovered a cute little litter basket with an inscription reading: ˝Keep Zurich clean, drop your refuse here!˝ At the end of our tether we stumbled over to the basket and with a relieved smile dropped in our infamous burden....

˝tschuldigung,˝ a policeman remarked behind our backs, ˝kindly take that thing back! This is a brand-new basket. Let?'s keep it clean!˝ ˝But,˝ I said in a daze, ˝but it says here to drop your litter in.˝

˝The litter, yes. But no refuse!˝

I stuck in my arm to the elbow and fished out the little parcel. A strange heat flushed my cheeks and my teeth started chattering.

˝Listen,˝ I croaked to the little one, ˝I?'m going to eat the damn thing!˝

˝Don?'t be silly,˝ the saintly woman replied, ˝you won?'t take that abomination into your mouth.˝

˝All right,˝ I whispered, ˝I?'ll have it cooked. . ."

Just then we were passing an exclusive restaurant, so we walked in and ran into the headwaiter, who immediately noticed the little parcel.

˝Waste paper?˝ the headwaiter asked. ˝Shall we cook it?˝

˝Yes,˝ I muttered. ˝Well done, please. . ."

˝The usual way,˝ the headwaiter said, then placed the Thing on a silver platter and hurried away to the kitchen. Fearing the worst, I fidgeted about on my chair, because the cooking in Swiss restaurants is rather colorless. Ten minutes later, a waiter brought in the little parcel:

they had fried it, then smothered it in dill sauce. I took a bite and spat it out. ˝It's burnt," I shouted, ˝disgusting!" With that we jumped up and left. Before our mind's eye there appeared good old Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, with the brilliant sunshine of our country pleasantly reflecting itself in thousands of nice heaps of glittering litter.

LOL, Merry Andrew.

He is wonderful, CJ. A little Dave Barry but with more character. I wonder why he isn't popular in the US? We may be leaning toward fundamentalism in government, but I don't think fundamentalists would pay any attention to this gentle author.

Kishon is very much read in Europe. Love his short stories, funny and pensive at the same time. Highly recommended.

Obituaries


February 02, 2005

Ephraim Kishon
Conservative Israeli satirist and bestselling writer whose books are particularly popular in Germany



EPHRAIM KISHON was one of the most popular satirists of his age, selling more than 40 million books in his half-century of writing.
Kishon was born Ferenc Hoffmann in Budapest in 1924, the son of an assimilated middle-class Jewish family. Forbidden admission to university under the Nazi-influenced racial laws of Hungary's Horty regime, he began an apprenticeship as a goldsmith.



In 1944 he was interned in a forced-labour camp, the first of several from which he was eventually saved by daring and by luck. His excellent chess playing kept him alive in one camp whose commandant needed a skilled opponent; in another he was spared execution by a sadistic guard who shot everyone else around him. "He made a mistake letting a satirist live," Kishon would later remark.

He finally escaped during transportation to the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, and survived the remainder of the war in disguise as "Stanko Andras", a Slovakian labourer. In 1945 he returned to Hungary, where he began to study art history and sculpture, but he disliked the new Communist regime, and in May 1949 set sail for the new state of Israel.

"Born in Budapest, reborn in Israel," Kishon said of himself. Arriving in Haifa aboard a refugee ship, he identified himself as Ferenc Kishont ?- with a new, Israeli-sounding name rather than his native Hoffman. Through a typing error by an immigration official, the 25-year-old Kishont was registered without a final T and his Hungarian name of Ferenc disappeared altogether. "There's no such name," said the same official, arbitrarily assigning him the Hebrew name of Ephraim.

Kishon spent his first years in Israel on the Kfar Hachores kibbutz near Nazareth, working as an electrician, farmhand and latrine-cleaner. He also found work writing for the Hungarian-language Zionist newspaper Uj Kelet (New Middle East), and after only two years had sufficient mastered Hebrew to begin writing for the new national newspaper Maariv (Evening), under the pseudonym Ghad Gadja (Little Lamb). For some 30 years Kishon contributed a daily column to Maariv, which remained a steady voice of conservatism within a predominantly liberal Israeli press.

Kishon made his literary breakthrough in the 1950s with The Blaumilch Canal, the satirical tale of a lunatic who breaks out of his asylum to drill a giant hole through the middle of Tel Aviv. The book, written in Hebrew, brought him instant popularity in Israel, and he followed it with a 50-year series of novels in similar vein, a wryly humorous retelling of everyday life in his new homeland. His affectionate stories of his own family life, published in English as My Family Right or Wrong, is the most widely sold Hebrew book in the world after the Bible.

Kishon's output of some 50 books has been translated into 37 languages, with worldwide sales of 43 million copies, the majority (32 million) in German. "It gives me great satisfaction to see the grandchildren of my executioners queueing up to buy my books," he said.

But he rejected the idea of collective guilt for the Holocaust, and maintained many friendships in Germany. Christina Weiss, the German Culture Minister, described Kishon as "a catalyst for development in the best sense. He helped a lot of Germans to confront and overcome their anti-Semitism," she said.

Besides his books, Kishon wrote plays and film scripts, directing the latter himself, and earning three Golden Globes and two Oscar nominations. In March 2002 he was awarded the Israel Prize, the country's most prestigious award. He responded with a mixture of pride and irony. "I've won the Israel Prize," he declared, "even though I'm pro-Israel. It's almost like a state pardon. They usually give it to one of those liberals who love the Palestinians and hate the settlers."

In recent years, Kishon's fervent Zionism had made him increasingly unfashionable among Israel's left- leaning intellectuals, and he lost no opportunity to attack the "smart arses who sit around in cafés turning the most patriotic young people in the world into self-hating Jews".

It was Kishon's bitterness towards Israel's literary establishment, who viewed his bestselling "middle-brow" works with some disdain, which prompted his decision in 1981 to make a second home in the rural Swiss canton of Appenzell. From Switzerland, he continued to voice his Zionism ("though I'm in favour of a Palestinian state") and an increasingly strident conservatism. He became an active polemicist against modern art and gave his public support to the American-led invasion of Iraq.

Kishon gave his last newspaper interview the evening before his death, to comment on the address which Horst Köhler, the President of Germany, was to give to the Knesset ?- a walkout by members had been feared if Köhler addressed the Israeli parliamentarians in German.

"I advise Herr Köhler to begin with a few words in Hebrew," said Kishon. "Then he should apologise for speaking in German. It's his own language, but it's the language that accompanied the most bestial behaviour towards the Jews." As to the threatened walkout, Kishon added: "There's no need to insult a good man."

Although he died in Switzerland, Kishon was buried in the artists' cemetery in Tel Aviv. He is survived by his third wife, Lisa Witasek, and three children.




Ephraim Kishon, Israeli satirist, was born on August 23, 1924. He died on January 29, 2005, aged 80.